Margaret the Virgin
Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr (Greek: Ἁγία Μαρίνα) in the East, is celebrated as a saint on 20 July in Western Christianity, on 30th of July (Julian calendar) by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and on Epip 23 and Hathor 23 in the Coptic Orthodox Church.
For other uses, see Saint Margaret (disambiguation).
Margaret of Antioch
Saint Marina the Great Martyr
Saint Marina the Great Martyr
c. 289
Antioch of Pisidia
(modern-day Yalvaç, Isparta, Turkey)
c. 304 (age 15)
20 July (Roman Catholic Church, Most of Anglicanism,[1]Western Rite Orthodoxy)
17 July (Byzantine Christianity)
Epip 23 (Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria) (Martyrdom)
slaying a dragon (Western depictions)
hammer, defeated demon (Eastern Orthodox depictions)
pregnant women, nurses, peasants, exiles, the falsely accused, the dying, kidney disease, Lowestoft, Queens' College, Cambridge, Sannat and Cospicua
She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread of her following.[2]
Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints Joan of Arc claimed to have spoken with.
Hagiography[edit]
According to a 9th-century martyrology of Rabanus Maurus, she suffered at Antioch in Pisidia (in what is now Turkey) in around 304, during the Diocletianic persecution. She was the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman five or six leagues (15 to 18 miles (24 to 29 km)) from Antioch. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, Margaret was disowned by her father, adopted by her nurse, and lived in the country keeping sheep with her foster mother.[3][4] Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her, but with the demand that she renounce Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents are reported to have occurred. One of these involved being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards. Eventually, she was decapitated.
Historicity[edit]
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Margaret's story is "generally regarded to be fictitious".[4][5] The Catholic Encyclopedia states that "even the century to which she belonged is uncertain".[6]
Doubts about her story are not new: already in the Middle Ages, hagiographer Jacobus de Voragine (author of the well-known Golden Legend) considered her martyrology to be too fantastic and remarked that the part where she is eaten by the dragon was to be considered a legend.[7]